Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to wireless communication, and more particularly, to techniques for configuring adaptive frame structures for wireless communications using unlicensed radio frequency spectrum.
Description of the Related Art
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless networks may be multiple-access networks capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available network resources. Examples of such multiple-access networks include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) networks, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) networks, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) networks.
A wireless communication network may include a number of eNodeBs that can support communication for a number of user equipments (UEs). A UE may communicate with an eNodeB via the downlink and uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the eNodeB to the UE, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the UE to the eNodeB.
As the demand for mobile broadband access continues to increase, using LTE in unlicensed radio frequency spectrum has been considered to solve the spectrum congestion problem for future wireless needs, not only to meet the growing demand for mobile broadband access, but to advance and enhance the user experience with mobile communications. However, unlicensed radio frequency spectrum may carry other transmissions, requiring techniques such as listen before talk (LBT) procedure (e.g., clear channel assessment (CCA)) to gain access to the unlicensed radio frequency spectrum. These techniques present challenges when using current radio frame formats.